Entries this day: Skating

Skating

8:12am JST Saturday 3 January 2004

This is the first day that I've gone skating in Japan. My skates arrived in Japan when janette brought them in September. But the first (!) time I tried to put them on, the buckle broke. That sucked. Twice, Carla and I have planned to go skating (she'll bring duct tape; I'll bring my skates) and twice it has rained on our scheduled day.

The weather is traditionally clear around New Years in Tokyo and today that holds true. Clear and cold.

As I walked to the train station, with my skates in my big rolling suitcase, I noted that in Houston or Dallas I would either drive with my skates to a place and skate, or put them on at my residence and skate from there. The latter was usually my preference. That equaled skate now.

11:11am JST Saturday 3 January 2004

Got to Carla's around 8:40 and replied to 裕子's good morning text; the first we've talked in 2 days then dinged Carla's intercom.

Duct tape worked just fine to hold my skate on. I was a bit worried at first, but I completely had no problems while skating, even doing some jumps and tight turns and all the silly stuff I like to do.

Skated around her extended neighborhood, including the edge of Chinatown where my mom and Jon and I hung out one night. She showed me where a lot of skate video had been taken and told me that Clayton is wanting to edit the video, but doesn't have a fly enough computer to do it. I wonder if my computer could.

(secretly I just want to be in a video / be inspired to make my own video / have access to a camera that can take video and relive the hilarious fun times that Fred, Pete, Katy and I all did back in the day)

On the way down from the backstage of their video lot (which completely describes nothing like what someone else would call it) I gained some speed and then saw that after I turned a corner I would have to descend some big stairs. "Wuh oh.." but I was able to make it down without dying.

We skated near Sakuragicho and near the roller coaster and big ferris wheel and World Porters, then near Landmark Tower, next to which is a cooooool art thing that looks like a hybrid roller coaster / Matrix sentinel / metal snake. VERY climbable. (except for legal issues)

I left my camera at Carla's house though. (*)

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She showed me graffitti wall and pointed over to a building, "Benny lives over there." Graffitti wall is about 600 meters long maybe and has hundreds of sections about 9 square meters that people have painted. Some sections were obviously old with paint peeling, and some were new to Carla, so probably within a month or two old. Many sections had the former images still visible along the top, as if recent artists don't have chairs to stand on when they paint.

Her favorite image reminded me of tribal face painting of people indigenous to the land where I used to live, and reminds her of Japan.

My favorite looked like a 1970s disco hip hop hybrid guy with big hair and big pants and tiny waist.

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We shared stories and yammered about whatever we saw during the adventure. Good times.

(*) to the tune of A Tribe Called Quest's song.